The Roman saying goes: "The pope is only sick when he is dead," and Benedict XVI is not the first to demonstrate failing health while in office.

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Posted Feb. 12, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Feb 12, 2013 at 7:08 AM

Posted Feb. 12, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Feb 12, 2013 at 7:08 AM

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The Roman saying goes: "The pope is only sick when he is dead," and Benedict XVI is not the first to demonstrate failing health while in office.

He is, however, the first one in 600 years to abdicate.

Even as the church has legislated the retirement of bishops at age 75 and excluded cardinals over 80 from electing a new pope, the papacy was exempted from these rules for other hierarchical positions.

The bombshell of this pope's decision may well translate into a bottom-line premise: In the future, all popes will serve terms of office rather than being elected for life.

It is a very modern idea to view the pope as CEO of a global corporation, rather than as a living saint chosen by God for life.

The contemporary administrative perspective makes church authority more akin to the modernizing influences of the II Vatican Council, 1962-64, than to the feudal traditions of medieval Christendom, when popes and bishops — like emperors and kings — ruled until they died.

I predict that Pope Benedict XVI's legacy will be remembered more as a progressive step toward modernity rather than a pontificate with admittedly very conservative pronouncements.

Pope Benedict said the future of the church requires more intellectual and physical vigor than he could have mustered, a conclusion bolstered by his experience of how his predecessor's ill health impeded immediate action during the pedophilia crisis.

The next papal conclave shall have to ask whether health and age considerations require the next pope to announce a willingness to abdicate.

Is the papacy to be treated as the rest of the hierarchy? Or will the tradition of pope-until-death prevail?

The question indirectly affects whether the pope is viewed as the quasi-divine "Vicar of Christ on earth" who possesses infallibility in doctrinal decisions or simply as the temporary head of a global institution, relying on organizational and pastoral skills to lead Catholicism.

One cannot forget that the institutional church is fading in Europe, while in the United States political divisions among the bishops have debilitated its organizational vitality.

In contrast, Catholicism is growing in Africa and much of Latin America.

Which is more important to the church's future: to restore the old Catholicism in Europe and North America? Or press on with a new institution in the rest of the world?

Whatever the answer, a younger and vigorous pope will have to do the leading.

Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo of East Stroudsburg is professor emeritus and a Catholic theologian, and writes a blog, Catholic America, for the Washington Post, and at Our Daily Thread for Catholics United.